From Text to Script (to Text)
The Toronto production has also supported Erin Julian and Helen Ostovich’s edition the play for the Oxford University Press Complete Works of John Marston (gen eds Martin Butler and Matthew Steggle). The script for the production was an early version of the edited Oxford text; Julian and Ostovich were present throughout the rehearsal period (January-March 2019) and observed how the cast and director Noam Lior worked out entrances, exits, and other stage directions, doubling and quick changes, as well as larger questions about the play’s humour (a mixture of high-brow witticism, low-brow scatological jokes, and dark, almost cruel city comedy humour) or how accents read on stage – including the various accents (French, Welsh, Scottish/northern, Spanish) ‘put on’ by characters like Freevill and especially Cockledemoy, and the ‘natural’ accents of the titular Dutch Courtesan, Franceschina (whose stage Dutch is, of course, as put on as any of Cockledemoy’s voices).
Observing rehearsal work has allowed the editors to offer new interpretative choices for the play’s text and resolve long-standing cruxes in stage directions. Julian and Ostovich shared their discoveries and video of the production at the ‘Marston Effect’ conference in March 2019. The editors will present further discoveries made in rehearsal in the play’s introductory essay and a chapter on the play in a companion handbook to the Complete Marston.
Check back for further notes and 'extras' from the editorial process that will be posted here following the edition's completion.